The Anti Parenting Guide to Raising an Inappropriate Child

The most challenging thing about raising a kid: teaching them to be “appropriate,” when YOU’VE never mastered that.

I just decided to go ROGUE with the whole thing.

I learned early in my son’s life that all those “instructions” which come with car seats and cribs – are merely SUGGESTIONS. I frequently improvised. He’s alive, isn’t he?

So just

okay? Play it by ear.

1. Steps and Baby Gates.

I have 3 little steps that lead down from my kitchen into the family room. Everyone was panicked when he started walking and insisted I put a baby gate up.

Why? He fell down them a couple of hundred times, and mastered that shit. Practice makes perfect, right?

Don’t tell me I’m the only one. Why else would they sell this crap?

2. The “Big Boy Bed.”

Supposedly, you purchase one when your kid can climb out of the crib.

Bullshit. And I hate that vernacular.

P.S. We didn’t. I put huge throw pillows around his crib, to break his fall. Dude, he was climbing outta that thing when he was two. He’s lucky I didn’t buy a net to put over the top.

All that’s missing is the tin cup to rattle against the bars.

3. Potty training.

He was defiant and resistant (with everything, why should this be different?)

He was 3, and he hadn’t eaten any candy yet. No, I wasn’t trying for stellar parenting. I had no interest in spending thousands of dollars on dental bills for freaking baby teeth.

I covered the bathroom in so much candy it looked like Willy Wonka’a chocolate factory exploded in there. HE NEVER LEFT. He sat on the toilet and ate candy. ALL DAY. Eventually, he pooped. Case closed.

Or you could just SCARE the shit out of them.

4. The Facts Of Life.

Little Dude thought all babies were taken out of mommy’s belly, like he was. (C-section). He was grossing me out so badly the other day, describing to me his vomit from the night before in Technicolor.

I can barely handle puke. I was getting queasy, but he would shut his cake hole? Nooo. He thought it was hilarious to see me turning green. Finally, I just countered with,
“Well, babies come out of women’s VAGINAS!”

It shut him up AND took care of something he needed to know. Two birds with one stone. I multitask like that.

That oughta be good for a couple of nightmares, amirite?

5. Honesty.

Honesty is of the utmost importance.

HOWEVER. There are some grey areas.

I got pulled over for speeding with him in the car. Now, I can…finesse my way out of a ticket every time. It’s a SKILL. But not with my KID in the car. So, I had to come up with a new method.

I made him pretend he was sick. I even made him open the car door and simulate vomiting, which tells you how committed I was to our skit.

My driving record is still intact, thank you very much. He also learned that it’s okay to lie to the police, which will be a much-needed skill in his teen years, if they’re anything like mine.

I will NOT be picking your ass up a police station. DENY, DENY, DENY.

6. Safety First

Look both ways before you cross the street blah blah blah. Of course.

But Little Dude insisted I demonstrate a “Chinese Fire Drill.” Keep in mind – this as not at all like the time I threw him out of the car on I95 because he called Patti Smith a “hobo.” This was for FUN.

A Chinese fire drill, for the uninitiated, is when you get to a red light, and everyone leaps out and runs laps around the car, ending up in a different seat.

Why? Because it’s FUN! At least it was when I was really high younger. At the next busy intersection, we hit a red light and, GO!

It was AWESOME! We couldn’t really switch seats because he can’t drive, but every car started honking, and people were laughing and giving us thumbs up.

Actively endangering your child’s life really brings out the community feeling in people.

7. Cursing

I TRIED not to.

It started in the car. I don’t think I can drive without saying “motherfucker.” At least, not in New Jersey.

And then, it progressed. Because certain phrases just roll off the tongue when you’re dealing with a hyper, super talkative 4th grader.

He pops out of bed like he has a spring-loaded tampon up his ass. Sometimes, nothing captures the moment better than “Calm the Fuck DOWN!”

People tell me cursing isn’t “feminine.”I tell them they can SUCK MY DICK.

8. Laughing at his inappropriate behavior.

YES. I do. It’s funny. I’ve TRIED not to.

He walks out of the bathroom wiping his ass- because he thought of something he needed to tell me and he can’t possibly wait until he’s finished. I start telling him it’s inappropriate, but it’s so DISGUSTING I just end up laughing.

He has ADHD, so all these unfiltered and bizarre things stream out of his mouth, particularly if he’s excited. We were in the mall, going to the movies. He’s babbling away.

“Oh, she’d make a good step mom. She fits the criteria.”

Really? What’s the ‘criteria?’

“Huge rack.”

I suppose it’s as good criteria as any, right? I burst out laughing and he just keeps going.

“I have a really long tongue. It’s 7 inches. Dad measured it.”

Why did you father measure your tongue? Wait. Don’t Answer.

“Hey, wanna go get some (he pauses here, and accompanies this last part with a hugely exaggerated fake wink and a clucking sound) chicken wings?”

Where does this come from? I wish he were older, and I could tell him to combine the long tongue and chicken wing remark. It would make the world’s best original pick-up line.

Last weekend we watched Menace II Society. Twice in a row, because it’s awesome. I might have just as well handed him a video tutorial on how to cook crack.

And I’ve given up trying to lunge for the remote every time a commercial for a class action suit against Transvaginal Mesh Failure comes on. He doesn’t even ASK what that is. He googled that shit. That’s probably how he ended up seeing the lady with the (spoiler alert) toaster in her ass.

10. Computer supervision.

He’s only allowed to be on his tablet out in the open. There are parental controls on it.

But he SEES stuff. At least he hasn’t discovered YouPorn (yet).

First he “accidentally” saw naked ladies on Google images.

Then, he tells me one of the aforementioned naked ladies had a toaster up her butt.

Is that even physically possible? I’ve tried googling that very thing. I get NOTHING.

And YouTube is a JUNGLE.

Yesterday, I was sitting RIGHT IN THE ROOM WITH him. Writing.

And I hear a droning male voice, “the hydrogen cyanide must be liberated from the sugar it’s chemically attached to. This occurs when-”

THAT upset me. Watching an instructional video on how to make cyanide? I don’t want him poisoning some kid over a fucking Pokemon card.

Once he finds Tumblr? I’m. So. Screwed.

I also told him that he needs to be careful what he watches, because now, he’s on a list somewhere for viewing that.

*HUGE eyeroll* “Mom. The 60’s are OVER.”

Do me a favor.

If I’m found dead of cyanide poisoning, with a toaster hanging out of my ass, indict the little fucker.

Have you found it impossible to be “appropriate” around your child? What’s the most inappropriate thing you’ve ever said, or done?
Can someone really fit a toaster up their ass?
Talk to me. I’m listening.

105 responses to The Anti Parenting Guide to Raising an Inappropriate Child

7, 8, 9 and 10 are pretty much the way we have gone. I never censored anything on the TV or music, and it worked out fine. His teachers would have trouble keeping a straight face around him when he had to be sent to the office for his behavior.

As far as the last one, about Pokemon porn and all, I have to ask: are you familiar with rule 34? Because if you aren’t, he is going to learn about it soon from older classmates, then look out.

(personally, I no longer check M’s browser history. He’s respectful and is sweet to his girlfriends when he has one, so I am guessing he knows that hentai and torture porn are not what he should be “researching”. I trust him on that.)

Hahahah…we are not terribly appropriate at my house, either. I don’t see the point. They are going to see and hear all this shit anyway…why censor it here. I mean, we don’t watch porn around the dinner table, but language isn’t censored.

A Mama after my own heart! My 5 year old has been saying “That’s what she said” and “I shipped my pants” forever. I generally call all three of mine little shits, when I’m not calling them babe and sweetie. So my youngest started calling her older sibling “little shits” when she was about three years old. When your husband follows up every line he can think of with “…like my women” you can’t even pretend to be proper and classy.

I don’t get all the fuss about profanity. I’m an adult, I can say whatever I want, they’re kids so they can’t. Simple.

My son asked me a few years ago why kids all laughed every time the number “69” was mentioned in math class. I froze and told him I didn’t know. I couldn’t bring myself to explain that to him even though we’ve had every other type of sex talk. Some things he should just learn from his peers, not his mom.

And my favorite way to mess with their heads is I routinely tell them that one of the others is my favorite. “Why does she get to do that?” “Cause she’s my favorite.” Shuts them up every time.

Oh yeah, kicking him out of the car for calling Patti Smith a hobo is awesome. He’ll be telling his grandkids that story!

Samara, this was really funny and brilliant. I love the photos and the captions. Your son is lucky to have a home that is so full of fun and laughter. And now I know one other thing a vagina does. Wow. Thank you.

My kids grew up listening to me and my pisshead mates flyblown in theBar and swearing as if we’d invented it…no point telling ’em they can’t swear. These days I go for “Dont say that to/around your Grandmother” and correcting enunciation & context. Also, when it was my turn to babysit when mummy went out, every one of my kids did time in an upside down cot…little fuckers were like ninjas in onsies, I had to get creative or not drink beer…creative won.

Yeah, we had a portable cot (crib) that you could fold down and put in the car, so I would set it up where I was and put down a blankly and some toys and then plonk the onesied ninja on the blanky and then put the cot upside down over the top…it was very easy to rectify quickly when I saw the Queen coming home…she never knew about it until we were telling the kids (now teenagers) stories the other week haaa!

YES!! Laughter trumps all kinds of stuff. We laugh all the time here too. The kids all prime their mates before they come over that they’ll need to be armed with a healthy self-esteem and a second skin. No one here gets out…unscathed.

Pissheads drink a lot. Flyblown is a colloquial expression for the state you are guaranteed to be in after you’ve been drinking in my bar for 12 hours or so. And yeah, crazy is a good word for ’em.

You know I’m a goody-two-shoes-marching-band-geek on the outside, but oh, how I laughed at this. My 50 lb. four-year-old is still in a crib. Really. And my kids are totally confused by the contradiction between Mama making nude self portraits to hang in galleries and little boys NOT showing their twigs and berries to every girl we have a play date with. Life’s confusing like that. Which is why I appreciate your crystal clear parenting (crystal clear like cyanide, I hear…)

Only me… and my old band teacher.
And if the only reason to move a kid out of a crib is to put a new one in it (which did apparently work the first three times…) then she’s in it for-ev-er.
Keep rockin’ it, badass Mama-nerd.

Since you can’t say “gay” any more to mean “weenie-ass bullshit”, I use the term “inbred” instead. So, anyway, when my little girl was in preschool or the first couple grades, they taught them this inbred crap that the word “stupid” was a bad word. I’d call something “stupid” and she’d say “You said a bad word.” I’d swear at the printer at times (by the way, everyone at Hewlett Packard should die in a car fire) and she wouldn’t bat an eyelash, but if I’d string together a big long “stupid stupid stupid stupid…stupid machine” in an effort to not say “motherfucker,” she’d tell me “I’m HERE, you know!”

I hated the show “Thirty-something”, just for the name of it if nothing else, but one of the dads on there had a great answer for his kid asking “What’s 69?”: “It’s the year the Mets won the pennant.” Thanks for the laughs.

Oh, MIss Samara, we would have fun together! I did have to put the controls on the iPad watching because my son totally discovered porn. I was shaken, I was sad, so we put on the controls on there. And you know what? I think he was relieved. Who knows what he saw. Innocence lost! I know it will happen sooner or later, but I prefer later. We have never played the Chinese Fire Drill! My kids would dig that one!

I swear like a sailor and have for years — and none of my kids were permanently scarred. The whole potty training thing is a pain — with my first kids, I really pushed them and they ended up being anal retentive — literally. Those girls would hold in their poop for weeks and I was washing stained underwear daily! I finally learned my lesson and the last two kids pottied at their own pace.

I am always so relieved to find other mothers out there who approach parenting with a fast and loose style and some humor. My goal is to screw my kids up just enough so they turn out awesome like David Sedaris and can then support me in my later years.

We will all just have to wait and see how he turns out. Also, this is the ultimate thing I am taking away/possibly having put on a T-shirt: “Actively endangering your child’s life really brings out the community feeling in people.” I like.

I know. Argh. Also: I meant to go back to the facebook post where I was all “what, why?!?!” and recant because honestly it’s none of my damn business and it was way too shouty of me to insist upon an explanation. Anyways: You and your leather short shorts will be missed.

God…what a sense of humor you have! I’m dying here!
I gave up trying not to curse a while back. My kids have gotten used to it. My daughter loves to video my road rage incidents in her iPhone. I imagine she’ll use them one day…..probably to blackmail me into getting her a nicer car!

Just this morning, when my son woke up at 5:45 and insisted I wake up with him, I told him “roll over and go back to sleep.” He asked “why” because he’s 4 and I answered, “because it’s too fucking early.” We’ve had burping contests and dirty joke contests (not THOSE dirty jokes, but like who can come up with the worst combination of animal poop – my son won with horse poop and elephant diarrhea). Inappropriate is my middle name.
And crib climbing…when my son figured that shit out at 15 months I moved the night stand closer to the crib so he’d have a “step”. There was no stopping him, so I just shortened the gap between the two pieces so he wouldn’t smash his head rolling over the top of the crib. At 18 months, he got a toddler bed, which he actually managed to stay in more than the crib. Couldn’t blame him there – prisons that cribs are.

HOW many ways do I LOVE you right now!?? I was raised by a mother whose every-2nd word was FUCK! For years I thought that t-shirt in every shop in the village (which then became super-popular in souvenir shops in Times Square) – you know that one that says FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKING FUCK!! – was inspired by my mother. When I told her about that shirt, she cracked up & said “That’s FUCKING hilarious!”. My parents were very liberal hippies so by the time I was 4, I had a strong urge to make “cigarettes” for my dad (I liked his rolling gadget); by the time I was around 8 I was familiar with Playboy (we went to the old Playboy Club in Westchester(?) for a brief vacation – I wanted a Bunny outfit); when I was 11 my dad & I thumbed through a Playgirl magazine I found in community center where my dad taught pottery & photography (I’m still sort of baffled by this) and by the time I was 15 I was an expert joint-roller. Never been arrested, though… 😉

Your son is going to be the most well adjusted child in town, for sure! I try not to laugh at my 20 year old’s ADD innapropriateness but I often give in. When he was little and we were in our local library checking out some books, he looked at the librarian and calmly blurted out, “butt crack”. For no apparent reason, just an ADD-Tourette-like outburst! I could not control my laughing fit! 🙂

I was pretty casual about the carseat, the crib and the baby gate (only to protect my dishwasher!!). And, yes, I have a pottymouth so they’ve heard me swearing enough to actually completely ignore it nowadays!

I act like I’m a goodie two shoes, but it’s hard to keep up the facade when both my 4 and 6 year olds repeatedly drop their drawers and pee directly onto the playground mulch.
I refused to use baby gates, too.

I came back over here because it dawned on me I never commented the other day when I read it. Needless to say, LURVE. So so so very funny and 100% Samara.

Things we don’t do that people think you HAVE to do:
1. go to church (hurl)
2. eat dinner together around a table every night
3. not swear in front of the kids. I admit, I tried really hard to curb it the first few years, but now they’ve pretty much heard it all, daily, so fuck it. I’d rather they hear my curse words than inhale second hand smoke or watch me sell drugs, amirite?
4. hover over every move they make. Let them LIVE. Let them be kids, and get muddy, and fall, and eat candy, and experiment, and giggle loudly, and make messes. (the latter I’d prefer they did outside and not in my house which I JUST cleaned.)
5. stop my boys from peeing in the woods. I have friends that will not let their sons pee outside. Like ever. Puleeze. We’ve coming home after a late night and my son “can’t hold it!!!!” so we let him whiz on the front bushes. hahahahahah Penises RULE.

I’m in the beginning stages of potty training my son, and he prefers to go outside. Sometimes I’ll ask him if he has to pee on the potty, and he’ll say “No, I have to pee in the grass.” As long as it’s not in his diaper or on my floor/walls/ceiling/household items, I’m good.

Toaster tears? What the what?
I’m bookmarking this for future reference. Luckily, for the time being, I don’t have to worry about any of it. My time is coming. I know. It will be here sooner than I am ready. But, … censoring will be the first thing out the window. What’s the point, that’s not the world we live in. My parents forbade us from cursing and went their merry way cursing at each other all the time… gee, I wonder where we picked it up. And there is no way I can curb my road rage. It is part of the southern California commuter lifestyle. They (the parental units) also didn’t let us own or listen to music that had cursing in it… which seems like an affront to the artists and I’ll have none of that in my house. If a lyric was written as curse then that is the way it should be heard.
And, shouldn’t inappropriateness be celebrated? It’s the unique individuals in our society who seem to make it the farthest. People who conform may fit in during school but then they get sucked into the mire of 9 – 5 jobs…